Saturday, May 10, 2014

On
May 5, 2012, I wrote here that the staggeringly mind-numbing incompetence of
the Jonathan administration in the wake of heightening Boko Haram violence in northern
Nigeria called for an experiment with what I called “privatized governance.” I
made the suggestion tongue-in-cheek, but many people misunderstood me as
advocating the re-colonization of Nigeria. But shortly after my suggestion, at
every opportunity President Jonathan has, he has never failed to ask the
“international community” to help him combat Boko Haram.

As
I write this, uniformed military personnel from the United States have arrived
in Nigeria to help rescue the scores of girls abducted by Boko Haram in Borno.
Britain and China are warming up to send their troops to Nigeria for the same
reason.

There
is no clearer indication of this government’s self-admission of ineptitude than
its invitation to other countries to help it perform the single most important
reason for its existence: provide security for its citizens. If what is
happening isn’t the beginning of privatized governance by other means, I don’t know
what is.

But
at this point, it’s actually useless to talk about sovereignty. What is the
worth of a “sovereignty” that can’t guarantee basic security for its citizens?
St. Augustine once said, “In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but
organized robbery?” I will rephrase that to, in the absence of guarantees to
basic security for citizens of a country, what is sovereignty but organized
robbery? Very few people will contest the fact that the Jonathan administration
is one heck of an organized robbery!

As I sit on my computer to write this, I am so
downhearted by the current happenings in Nigeria that I just feel like giving
up writing this column for this week. What is the point of writing when the
only country I can legitimately call mine is going up in flames without a
fight; when life in Nigeria has become notoriously cheap, short, and brutish;
when no one seems to be in control of the country; and when my core
constituencies—the news media and universities—have joined the long list of
targets for annihilation by an insanely primitive and murderous terrorist
group?

This has got to be one of the worst times to be a
Nigerian.Boko Haram’s unceasing and
ever-widening reign of mindless violence against innocents is turning Nigeria
into a West African Somalia, the ultimate exemplar of a failed state. General
T.Y. Danjuma captured it well when he characterized the current state of
affairs in the nation as the “somaliasation of Nigeria.”If nothing is done
urgently to stem this tide, we may be headed for a terrible implosion whose
consequences we cannot predict.

Boko Haram’s new violence against the news media and
universities—the bastions of democracy and civilization—is the biggest
indication yet of the severity of the problem that confronts us. It shows no
one is exempt from the terror group’s bloodthirstiness. Last Sunday’s attack on
Christian worshipers at Bayero University Kano, my alma mater, brought this reality
even closer home for me.

But a couple of issues worry me in all this. First,
Nigeria is now officially an anarchic country. There is certainly no functional
government in Nigeria now.Every Boko
Haram attack elicits the same predictably sterile and fly-blown response from
government officials. The attack is invariably called a “dastardly act” and
government is always “on top of the situation.” And that’s it—until the next
mass murder occurs. Yet trillions are budgeted for “security.”

My second worry is the cornucopia of conspiracy
theories in the north about these attacks. One set of conspiracy theorists
insists that the attacks are the handiwork of the “enemies of the north and
Islam”—whoever in the world they are— who are disguising as Boko Haram. Others
say Boko Haram is the invention of Americans to destabilize Nigeria. Seriously?
Yet others say it’s the creation of the Jonathan administration, although Boko
Haram has existed many years before Jonathan came to power. These theories are
so patently false, so unbelievably escapist, so childish, and so out-of-touch
they make me want to puke.

As one of my Facebook friends, Dr. Raji Bello,
perceptively noted, “…these theories are also boosted by the fact that most of
us don't actually listen to Boko Haram itself. We prefer to listen to GEJ,
Azazi, and sundry columnists but we don't listen to the very people who commit
these things. I make it a duty to listen to BH first before anyone else.

“I quickly download their videos each time a new one
is released and I play it over and over again. I pay attention to their media
telephone interviews. Honestly … from all their pronouncements, I don't see
anything other than that BH is a group of religious fanatics waging a jihad
(that is, according to their own distorted view of the term jihad). This is
what they say they are doing and they have been honest and very consistent.
Religious extremism is the primary thing behind BH and recruitment into their
fold is enhanced by poverty. Those are the only conclusions I can honestly
make. Other issues exist, yes, but they make insignificant contributions to the
problem.”

I couldn’t agree more with Raji. Until we face the
truth about what confronts us, we will continue to be held prisoner by
disabling self-pity and persecution complex.

But how do we get out of this terrible mess?

Well, I have a rather unconventional and slightly
“crazy” suggestion. Since our central government is both unable and unwilling
to tackle the menace of Boko Haram, maybe it’s time we experimented with
privatized governance. Let us privatize the governance of our country, send the
present crop of inept jokers at the helm of government packing, and invite any
group of people from any part of the world with the best capacity to govern an
unruly country like Nigeria to bid for the takeover of the governance of our country.

This shouldn’t be such a newfangled idea. After all,
we have privatized just about every facet of our national life already because
government allegedly “has no business being in business.” Well, this
government—and many governments before it— certainly has no business being in
governance.

Our very survival is at stake here. National
sovereignty has had no meaning in Nigeria for a long time. It’s even more
meaningless now.

Lijit Search

StatCounter

Google+ Followers

Subscribe To This Blog by Email

My Blog Followers

Google+ Badge

About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.